A few years ago, we had a whole lot of snow, and nobody here is
equipped to take care of it right away, so people were walking to the
store. It was great - the sidewalks were full of people, and everybody
was friendly.
Unfortunately, the store is gone now.

From 1977 to 2001, the number of miles driven every year by
Americans rose by 151% -- about five times faster than the growth in
population, according to data compiled for a 2006 report to the U.S.
Department of Transportation written by Stephen Polzin, a
transportation researcher at the University of South Florida in
Tampa.

The reasons for the big growth in miles traveled are pretty obvious
if you don't live in the center of a big city endowed with
functioning public transport. To make space for ever larger suburban
homes, housing developers pushed further and further from city
centers and shopping areas. New neighborhoods often had street
layouts cluttered with cul de sacs that forced people to drive
farther to get to main roads or stores. Local zoning laws --
reflecting the preferences of residents -- tended to separate
commercial and residential uses, and single family from multi-family
dwellings. Meanwhile, the bulk of the money spent on transportation
infrastructure was directed to building more and bigger highways. We
could have subsidized bullet trains and more light rail systems, but
we didn't.

A furious, though still fledgling, effort has commenced to help
Americas drivers curtail their trips, burn less fuel and,
ultimately, emit less CO2. It involves a marriage of transportation
planning, land use planning, engineering and public policy to
implement everything from smart growth to congestion pricing to
increased use of mass transit. And if that wasnt complicated
enough, it will involve every level of government, from town hall to
the United Nations.

For all the techno talk about magnetic levitation trains or
personal rocket packs, the urban transport system of the future
turns out to be bicycles. Sprockets and chains, seats and
handlebars, this 19th century technology may be the best weapon we
have for the long campaign to make livable cities in the 21st
century. Bicycles take a fraction of the space and materials of cars
or buses, are powered by the excesses of our calorie-rich diets, and
have the huge advantage for those who ride them of extending both
quality and length of life.

If the arguments for increasing urban bicycle use are this powerful,
why are so many cities having such a hard time setting aside
guaranteed bike routes and lanes  making them the transport mode of
choice, for work and leisure?

Filled with Mao-era images of clouds of cyclists on every street, on
my first visit to Beijing in 2004 I was astonished to learn that
bicycles had been recently banned from many of the Chinese capital's
most important streets. Rapidly-growing rates of car ownership had
pushed the gas-guzzlers onto every broad avenue, to crawl along at a
grid-locked snail's pace, with bicyclists pushed to side streets, or
worse, onto smoke-belching buses. As part of the green-washed run-up
to this summer's Olympics, Beijing authorities are belatedly getting
more bicycle-friendly, but the damage was done.

Powerful stuff...
I'll be using some of the above info in a letter I'm preparing to
city officials here in Mesa, AZ. Riding my bike again in a city where
motorist will not give you the right of way has me furious! And
having bike lanes that don't connect or just end...
Anyway, Thanks for the info!
But what I came to this topic for was to check out any electric car
info and share what I have found. If there is another topic or forum
I should check out, please direct traffic...
I wanted to get viewpoints on battery exchange programs such as "Shai
Agassi's Audacious Plan to Put Electric Cars on the Road".
http://www.wired.com/cars/futuretransport/magazine/16-09/ff_agassi
I could go on and on about what I have learned after watching "Who
killed the Electric Car" last year, but I'll run outa gas...

wren
Can you think of any initiative that would save more energy than to
not to spend any more federal funds on interstates and to invest in
high speed rail instead of additional lanes for cars to sit and idle in?

We definitely need to invest in rail over roads and highways. But
high speed rail should be last priority.
We need to invest first into regular speed rail, light rail,
trolleys, subways and the like ... gradually building out to a
regional network ... then inter-regional networks etc.
Eventually we should do high speed rail, but right now that would
pre-empt more the creation of more valuable local and regional
networks.

$8 billion taken from taxpayers throughout the nation to funnel
gamblers from LA into the Las Vegas casinos ... and Las Vegas just
happens to be the home state of the Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid of NEVADA. Coincidence, coincidences.

Besides the fact that we DON'T need high speed rail at this
juncture, we need more regular rail, we sure as hell don't need high
speed rail to Las Vegas of all places.

Actually, except for the fact that you pointed out that there is a
competing private venture, I would be all for this. A reasonably high
volume rail between two large cities with reasonable terrain concerns
and limited right of way issues.
We need to promote mass transit, but not in competition with private
ventures.

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